Education Week reports that there was no significant difference between the performance of eighth grade students in Finland and the US in mathematics on the TIMSS.

Four American states had higher scores in eighth grade mathematics on TIMSS than Finland: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Indiana.

This is not what you hear in the media, nor what you hear from the corporate reformers in these states, who are still crying wolf about the “crisis” in public education and the need to turn public schools over to private management as soon as possible.

Finland excels on the PISA exams, which tests have students use their learning to solve real-life problems. The TIMSS exams are aligned with the curriculum. Take your pick.

As I have written before and will write again, we should forget the horse race.

Once a nation reaches a certain level of economic and social development, the test scores predict nothing and are of far less importance than income inequality, poverty, and the physical and mental health of its people.

Surely, this question is rhetorical in nature. Why, indeed. Even the cable news network’s MSNBC, once considered a “progressive” news site, almost completely avoids any discussion of public schools and the move, with Obama’s approval, to replace them with corporate-owned, for-profit, complexes of rightest hegemony. And now, if the nod is given to the NRA. they’ll have their own army of guns around their schools’ doors.

Here’s the important thing: the humanistic, child-centered principles of Finnish education reform (real reform), coupled with its far more equitable economic society, have made it a country worth attending to. It’s nice that they have gotten some high test scores, but that’s not the point.

When they topped world results a couple of years ago, particularly in mathematics, the traditionalists didn’t start calling for us to look closely at Finland’s methods, materials, or anything else. Why not? Because they knew that the philosophy behind Finland’s apparent success didn’t jibe with their ideas about what education is supposed to be about. Just Google “Ze’ev Wurman” and “Finland” to find lots of links in which he and his cronies disparage Finnish education, based on a series of criteria that I personally find laughable. It’s clear in reading what they have to say that they are driven to dismiss even the PISA results, and of course to tout the TIMSS scores as the ones we should all attend to. And of course, were the results of Finnish scores in the latter extremely high and their PISA scores low, you can be assured that Wurman & Company would reverse the valuation of the tests, not the philosophies of education. Singapore HAS to be excellent in their eyes because, well, take a look at the political philosophy that rules there: you can be publicly caned for chewing gum in public.

The issue isn’t test scores, folks. It’s whether you think that good education and child-rearing practices look more like those of Finland or those of Singapore.

That Finland’s child poverty level is about 5.5% versus the US at around 22.3%, or that their adult literacy rate is 99% while US adults illiteracy level is between 19-22% apparently means nothing. And of course the social services or what we call wrap-around services for children are readily available for ALL kids in ways we can’t begin to imagine…none of this is ever considered. Oh, and yes, their very small and incredibly homogeneous population is so similar to ours, arguably one of the most diverse in the world is clearly irrelevant to how these comparisons are crafted.

Diane, you are so right about it! When I traveled the world in search of the Shangri-la in school education, and first visited Finland and other countries like Scotland, Flanders, and Sweden and even Switzerland, all of them high in PISA, I was surprised by the fact that how little importance the school community and the society gave to international or national test assessments. They were even less interested in ranking or league tables. Of course, they want to be successful, but they don’t brag about it! They are much concentrated in learning and teaching, and equality and the right cultural environment, than points in PISA or TIMSS or PIRLS. Education is not only about pedagogy; it is also about poverty, culture, transparency, equality and support!

For more proof of that, see today’s (Dec 23) NY Times front page story about three young, bright, motivated women from Galveston. “For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall.” Outstanding story that shows affluent students with low test scores fare better than low-income students with above average scores.

This is a case of classic reformist goal switching. We’ve done this quite a lot in Florida. Tests like PISA are all- important until students and teachers excel at them. Then the tests are deemed to be inadequate, without enough rigor, or flawed. The other strategy is to assume that if students and teachers do well they must have cheated. There is no way to win. If the tests are passed they are made more difficult and the bar is raised again and again. The only acceptable outcome is failure and demonization of teachers. There will never be good news about student performance because it doesn’t fit the reformist narrative.

Finland may not be relevant *now* because of their low child poverty but that is because they planned thirty years ago to reduce it through their social systems. One of their ways was all good schools and equity of access.